roove Biosciences, an Irvine, Calif., genetic-testing company, describes itself as “the leader in personalized pain medicine.” It’s received a bunch of fawning media coverage for its claims that its tests might help combat the national opioid crisis.

My article last December showed, however, that top experts in the field regard the firm’s claims to be able to predict with great accuracy which patients will become dependent on opioids as scientifically unsupported “hogwash.”

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Charles, let’s not paint with an overly wide brush here. There are some testing kits with solid evidence to back there claims. Case in point. I take atorvastatin for high cholesterol. A not uncommon side effect is myalgias. There is a test kit, Statin Smart, developed by Boston Heart Diagnostics, which can predict with a high degree of accuracy, based on your phenotype whether you are more or less likely to experience myalgias as a side effect of your statin treatment. And it’s got the peer reviewed research to back it up.

I also agree that a cottage industry of bogus genomic testing has arisen, which is further testament to the rising level of scientific ignorance in America. Only in a country populated by such dolts could you market genomic test kits to predict your wine preference or soulmate. And the ones popularized on TV give you only a very superficial genomic DNA map. So if you think you may have the Huntington’s gene or the Tay Sachs gene go see a real geneticist. On the other hand if you are interested in what percentage of your genome is Transylvanian then I say go for it.